he young man came quickly from within the tent.

'Marcus,' said Caesar. 'I have dreamed a very wonderful dream. Some
of it I forget, but I remember enough to decide what was not before
determined. Tomorrow the ships that have been brought round from the
Ligeris shall be provisioned. We shall sail for this three-cornered
island. First, we will take but two legions.

This, if what we have heard be true, should suffice. But if my dream be
true, then a hundred legions will not suffice. For the dream I dreamed
was the most wonderful that ever tormented the brain even of Caesar. And
Caesar has dreamed some strange things in his time.'

'And if you hadn't told Caesar all that about how things are now, he'd
never have invaded Britain,' said Robert to Jane as they sat down to
tea.

'Oh, nonsense,' said Anthea, pouring out; 'it was all settled hundreds
of years ago.'

'I don't know,' said Cyril. 'Jam, please. This about time being only
a thingummy of thought is very confusing. If everything happens at the
same time--'

'It CAN'T!' said Anthea stoutly, 'the present's the present and the
past's the past.'

'Not always,' said Cyril.

'When we were in the Past the present was the future. Now then!' he
added triumphantly.

And Anthea could not deny it.

'I should have liked to see more of the camp,' said Robert.

'Yes, we didn't get much for our money--but Imogen is happy, that's one
thing,' said Anthea. 'We left her happy in the Past. I've often seen
about people being happy in the Past, in poetry books. I see what it
means now.'

'It's not a bad idea,' said the Psammead sleepily, putting its head out
of its bag and taking it in again suddenly, 'being left in the Past.'

Everyone remembered this afterwards, when--

CHAPTER 11. BEFORE PHARAOH

It was the day after the adventure of Julius Caesar and the Little Black
Girl that Cyril, bursting into the bathroom to wash his hands for
dinner (you have no idea how dirty they were, for he had been playing
shipwrecked mariners all the morning on the leads at the back of the
house, where the water-cistern is), found Anthea leaning her elbows on
the edge of the bath, and crying steadily into it.

'Hullo!' he said, with brotherly concern, 'what's up now? Dinner'll be
cold before you've got enough salt-water for a bath.'

'Go away,' said Anthea fiercely. 'I hate you! I hate everybody!'

There was a stricken pause.

'_I_ didn't know,' said Cyril tamely.

'Nobody ev